


Perchance to Dream

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [13]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Dream Sex, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Orgy, Reincarnation, Rimming, Self-Acceptance, rimming circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:50:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4813859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has been injured in defence of Sherlock, and Sherlock hurts for John's hurts. But in a dream by a glade, they find comfort and healing, and a promise that they will never be parted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts), [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/gifts).



> So here we are, at the end of our journey. I wrote the the final parts of this tonight at the Barbican Theatre, in the presence of Atlinmerrick - that is, with the person who began it all, and at the place where I wrote the first story. There is, in keeping with this tale, a delightful circularity in that.
> 
> The title is of course from Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' speech, and of course the play is on at the Barbican, and there's pleasing circularity in that too.
> 
> If you've enjoyed the series, you might like some of this [Star-Crossed related stuff. ](http://www.redbubble.com/people/narrelleharris/collections/402314-star-crossed)

John slumped in the back of the taxi – propping himself up awkwardly on the door and resting his aching head on the cool glass of the window – with his eyes closed. Sitting upright was out of the question. He would fall asleep or slither to the floor or have to look at how Sherlock was looking at him, with the fear outranking the concern or indeed the anger in his eyes.

‘You don’t have to do that, John.’

‘Don’t, Sherlock. I’m too tired to argue about it now.’

‘It’s a promise made to a dead queen. You didn’t even make the promise.’

‘It’s not because of them. You know it isn’t.’

‘You could have _died_.’

‘Well, so could you, but instead here we both are, and bruises will heal. In my experience, bullets in the brain pan, not so much.’

‘He was never going to shoot me in the head.’

‘Sherlock, he was pulling the trigger.’

‘I didn’t say he wasn’t going to shoot. But he was going to _miss_.’

‘As the person more experienced with being shot at, I disagree. It’s moot in any case. You don’t have any holes in you at all, and he landed underneath me when I tackled him over the bridge, so it’s all fine. I didn’t break anything, and he broke four bones and ruptured his spleen. I’m willing to call it even.’

‘ _John_ …’

‘Sherlock. Please. No.’

The cab swerved around a corner. John swayed roughly against the door and winced. Next to him, Sherlock swayed with the momentum, too, but let it take him until he was lying with his head in John’s lap. He pressed his face into John’s thigh and carefully petted John’s knee and shin, which had remained undamaged by the fall.

John rested a hand against Sherlock’s hair and gently stroked the curls. Neither said a word for long minutes, until finally Sherlock said, ‘Lestrade received a call from Mycroft after the arrest.’

‘That happens from time to time, doesn’t it?’

Sherlock rubbed his cheek against John’s jeans. ‘From time to time. But Greg does not usually grin like he has won the lottery and declare that he will meet him at eight.’

Silence greeted this revelation, and a pause in John’s gentle pats, and then he huffed a laugh. ‘How about that?’

(In the future still unknown to them, Greg Lestrade would play his vital part in rescuing enthralled Mycroft from the alien, Angiran Rasi. Greg spent all his years thereafter at his own love’s side, for Mycroft was never quite the same again, and never slept without chilling nightmares, excepting when Greg Lestrade held him in the sheltering circle of his arms.)

John dragged his fingers through Sherlock’s curls again, watching how the strands wrapped around his skin, as though caressing him in return. Sherlock turned his face to kiss, through the jeans, the spot above John’s knee, and they were quiet for the remainder of the ride home.

At Baker Street, John managed to alight on his own and even limp up the stairs, but he was almost done in by the effort. Sherlock disrobed him and gently sponged John’s bruises and scrapes – stopping from time to time to kiss patches of unblemished skin – before leading him to bed.

‘Sherlock, I don’t need…’

‘Shh.’

‘I’m fine…’

Sherlock looked at John, and John looked back, and saw the fear was still there.

‘I’m not,’ said Sherlock.

All resistance, all tension, went out of John’s body then, and when Sherlock gently helped him to lie down and then pull the covers up, John only feathered his fingers over Sherlock’s wrist, cheek, leg, shoulder, as though to say with each brush of skin, _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._

‘Stay here with me,’ said John, and Sherlock curled up beside him, and around him, arm across John’s belly (carefully, softly, no pressure on the blooming bruises on his ribs) and his bare thigh pushed up close beside John’s (scratched from the brambles on which he and the desperate thief had landed; the thief wore a much more brutal pattern of tears along his back and buttocks). He tucked his face close to John’s and breathed his breath with him.

‘I can’t ever _not_ do everything I can to keep you safe,’ said John, voice breaking from matter-of-fact to apologetic. ‘It’s not about what Richard promised her. It’s about you and me. I plan on being with you for a long and maddening life.’ He tried to smile, and Sherlock pressed his nose to John’s cheek and breathed more deeply; shudderingly.

‘I know,’ said Sherlock at the end of a long exhale. ‘And I with you.’

‘We will be,’ John promised him. He turned his head (gingerly – his neck was hurting) and Sherlock tilted his face up and they kissed.

‘I know,’ said Sherlock, quiet and certain and determined.

*

The sweetly scented air fell soft on their skin, when John and Sherlock, clad only in trousers and wonderment, found that they held hands in the sun-warmed woods of a dream. Under their bare soles, grass pressed cool against their feet, and dappled light fell upon their bare torsos.

Through the greenery they heard two things: the merry babble of water, and the deeper rumble of two voices mingling in wanton ecstasy.

Sherlock and John walked together through the woods, seeking the source of the sounds which drew them on, beckoning them with the dual pleasures of peaceful respite and loving, lavish intimacy.

They paused at the edge of a glade, where they found what they sought – and made to withdraw, only a pair of winter pale eyes met theirs, knowing and warm and welcoming, before those eyes crinkled in joyous distraction and Khan gasped and then moaned, his naked back arching and his black-clad legs spread wide.

Richard, bare-legged beneath a linen shirt, lay between his love's thighs, nuzzling at cloth stretched tight across his angel’s hips and arse and crotch. He mouthed at the confined prick, which seemed more prominent by virtue of close-wrap’d, clinging cloth made wet with Richard’s mouth and Khan’s own wanton wetness. First while kissing the plump rise of his love’s cock, and second while sucking the shape of it, Richard’s eyes were closed in bliss. But as he kissed the crown that so stretched the thin black cloth once more, Richard’s gold-flecked blue eyes opened, lazy-sultry, full both of smug satisfaction and contented salutation.

‘Well met, and welcome,’ Richard said, husky, ‘Hast thou come to make merry with us?’

Before they could reply, he dragged his nose along Khan’s hidden shaft, from root to crown, and his Khan’s hips rolled and rose to find closer communion with Richard’s mouth. Richard obliged him, suckling once more the sopping cloth, pressing tongue and teeth both to the prize beneath, groaning his pleasure, a sound which in its turn drew forth swearing, shameless sighs from Khan.

Khan looked upon John and Sherlock again, who held hands and did not move, and said, ‘Why be ashamed of seeing us and wanting us. We are nought but yourselves, after all, in former frames and present desire… _Oh, Richard, yes…_ ’ He abandoned speech with them to incoherent cries of encouragement to Richard.

‘He has a point,’ said Sherlock to John, though he frowned at the catch in his deep voice, more thoroughly affected by the lascivious display than he would yet own.

John, for his part, could not look away from Richard, rubbing beard and mouth and nose with lustful abandon between Khan’s spread legs. As Khan’s hips flexed towards Richard’s loving attentions, so Richard’s hips curled and rutted against empty air, the impulse to seek friction unchecked although he made no further attempt yet to find relief.

John took a step towards the rutting pair, and another, and when the hand clasped in Sherlock’s was stretched behind him, he took another, releasing Sherlock’s hand and finally kneeling between Richard’s feet, between Khan’s feet. Bare chested, bare footed, clad in tight jeans (much too tight, now, in response to Richard and Khan’s delight) John knelt, breathless, and waited. Bracketed by long legs, clad in black cloth, and also by bare legs so much like his own, he raised a hand towards them, poised and waiting final permission.

Richard gave him that permission first, with a look as full of wonder as desire. Khan, then, urged John to _yes, move, yes, touch him, touch my love, bring him pleasure_ , before closing his eyes again, and clutching his fists into the green grass, crushing sweet scent into the air, arching his back so that the muscles of his chest strained.

And finally, John looked over his shoulder at Sherlock.

Sherlock, in two strides, stood behind John, and then he folded gracefully to his knees behind him.

‘John,’ he whispered, and he snugged up close. He wrapped his arms around John’s waist, and drew their bodies flush together, John pressed into his lap, Sherlock kissing and biting the back of John’s neck.

‘Yes,’ said Sherlock in that low and hoarse whisper, ‘Yes.’

John lowered both his hands to the back of Richard’s thighs, and stroked the skin, from the crook of his knees to the rise of his backside. Richard gave a gasp, as though the touch were felt as a shock, though when John lifted his hands away, Richard wriggled and shifted, trying to regain the feel of those hands on his skin again.

John pressed down again. Smoothed his hands up. Soft-rubbed his palms and fingers over the rise of Richard’s arse and to the dip above, where Richard’s crooked back began its twist to the right. Not changing the pressure, John rubbed both hands up, and then down; up once more, down again to Richard’s backside and thighs.

Richard made sounds that may have been laughter or possibly a sob, but he smiled as he looked over his shoulder at John. The blue-and-gold eyes of one met those of the other, and the sound that bubbled out of Richard now was most definitely laughter, of the happiest kind.

‘Oh, my cousin, my self, my Sherlock’s most precious John, wouldst thou do that again?’

For answer, John scooped and squeezed Richard’s backside, and Richard moaned and buried his face in Khan’s damp crotch, dragging bearded cheek along sensitive shaft once more. The scent of desire, of carnal joy, mingled with that of crushed grass and wildflowers, the whole a heady perfume of perfect longing.

‘Do not be shy, my other self,’ prompted Khan with soft voice and hard body, ‘But join us.’

Sherlock’s arms curled about John. With one hand he unfastened the button of John’s jeans, pulled down the zip, and he dipped long, warm fingers between John’s legs and gently squeezed. ‘Love him,’ he said softly, and tugged John’s jeans down over hips and thighs.

John kicked away the raiment and resumed loving caresses of Richard’s body, the firm explorations, with fingers, palms, wrists, and then his lips, tongue, shaven cheek, nudging nose and fluttering eyelashes, all brushing the thighs, arse, ribs, spine, of his older self.

Richard’s cry, once more a caduceus of sound, twinned laugh and sob, wrung out from him, and he quivered. His twisted back arched, his legs splayed, and he pushed his body back into that questing touch, and again. When John pushed his linen shirt high, Richard allowed Khan to help John remove the garment. Richard clung to Khan with his good arm, and Khan held Richard’s withered hand in his and kissed the clawed fingers. Khan and John between them held Richard’s trembling, naked body while John lavished gentle touches upon every gnarled turn of spine and flesh, over the knot of his hunched back, to the back of his bowed neck.

John’s body lay along Richard’s, and then Sherlock’s, too, was stretched alongside him. Unrobed now, Sherlock too lay between Khan’s legs, but he had pressed himself to Richard’s side. While John kissed the crooked spine that had made its owner cursed, Sherlock pressed close to a body so like yet not like that he loved, and he touched thigh, hips, waist and ribs with reverent care, as he would do so to his present love’s cherished skin. He pushed his long thigh between Richard’s, who could not help but straddle and seek to chase his own pleasure. Richard’s belly pushed silk-soft against Sherlock’s wet crown, and his arse pushed back against John’s seeking hardness, and Richard’s mouth sought and suckled Khan’s full-swelling prick.

Khan, joyful in his Richard’s surprised joy, ran his hands through Richard’s hair, against Sherlock’s cheek and John’s scarred shoulder, and then he grasped the grass in fiercely blissful grip while he cried out and came in those black trousers, against Richard’s sucking mouth.

And then Richard, gasping out the fullness of his heart in deep cries, cheek pressed to sticky cloth and his Khan’s spent prick, his own hips thrusting forth and back, between the parentheses of Sherlock’s hips and John’s, likewise came, in great waves that shook his body entire.

Thus led by good example, in a moment Sherlock, arms wrapped around Richard’s shivering body and John’s too, holding both close to him, convulsed too and spent himself, most blissfully, against Richard’s pliant, willing body, and so too John, rubbing his chest, stomach, cock and thighs all along Richard’s thighs and rump and spine and ribs, gasped and smeared their bodies with his pleasure.

For long seconds the four lay tangled, panting, and then Richard wriggled. His lovers shifted until he lay upon his back, head pillowed on Khan’s thigh, Sherlock wrapped along his unresponsive right side, John along his left, both draped along his body and petting his legs and belly and chest.

Richard, blue eyes bright and sparkling, his nakedness languid and confident-content, grinned with laughing mouth and happy heart, as a jewel displayed amidst a perfect setting made of beauty and strength. He who had spent a life untouched, unwanted, unloved, laughed again, despite his tear-wet cheeks. He turned to kiss John’s forehead, and then Sherlock’s, and he gazed up into the pale eyes of his Khan, who gazed adoringly down on him.

‘Tis a wondrous thing, to be loved,’ said Richard.

Khan brushed his fingers across Richard’s brow and down his cheek, his winter eyes as bright as spring flowers, as soft as down.

Richard’s simple statement, and the way Khan and Richard looked at each other, stirred Sherlock deep, for though he looked very like Khan, he knew some of the sorrows of Richard’s life. He could not help but to reply.

‘Yes, it is… wonderful,’ he said. He raised himself upon on elbow, the better to stretch along Richard’s body – so like John’s in stature and yet very much Richard’s own, marked by the sometimes cruel topography under his skin, of his twisting bones and wasted muscles, striped with war scars that came from blade rather than bullet. Sherlock caressed that much-abused frame, and kissed it tenderly, chest and collarbone and throat, before pressing his lips to the languid willingness of Richard’s mouth.

With his kiss, Sherlock said, _I love John and you within him and you are loved and we are loved, oh, oh, yes, oh, Richard, we are loved._

Khan and John both gazed in tender wonder at their other selves, once the loneliest of men, now sharing their knowledge of what it was to have their lonely self so filled up with cherished regard.

Soft-breaking from Richard’s mouth, Sherlock then kissed salt moisture from the corners of each of Richard’s eyes, and was at first surprised and then accepting when Khan’s own hand wiped the twins of those tears from his own lashes.

John, too, moved closer to Richard’s body, first kissing his shoulder, then reaching across him to caress Sherlock’s face and arms and ribs and flanks, his hands delivering a speech of affirmation. _Yes. I love you. We love you. Yes._

Richard’s once-savage face was now wreathed in the happy smile that no-one who had known him in his life, save Khan, had ever seen. Heavy lidded were his eyes, and his good left hand petted at John’s waist and hip, while his right leg nudged up in affectionate intimacy with Sherlock’s close-pressed body, since his right hand would not fulfil that office.

For his own part, Khan, with this bundle of naked, fondling devotion lying within the embrace of his thighs and calves, stroked shoulders and faces and throats and chests where he may.

He thought briefly of his siblings, crèche mates if not blood brethren: of when they were young and their makers were already so afraid of them, and all they had was each other. In those embattled days, he and they had partaken of such comforts. The pleasure he had found with them – sealing their ties as the family they chose to be – bonded them and gave release. Those were good memories, but so different to the intense joy of his union with Richard. Khan was filled with delight, that his glorious Richard should know the same love – to be touched and held and cherished by many hands, many hearts. To feel, as Richard had said, how wondrous it was. Khan felt as pleased as if this had been his own idea.

Sherlock, never one to ignore the crux of things for long, was at last the one to ask into the sweet, petting idyll, ‘Why are we here?’

‘Thou art my honey heart,’ declared Richard gently, encompassing all of them at once, ‘and are in need of comfort and rest. John is hurt in body, and Sherlock is hurting for John’s hurts, but here in our glade, old selves and new will find respite. This place of renewal will show thee again that this love we have grows like a bloom and cannot be crushed. It expands like the universe – which my honeyest of hearts swears to me is so – and knows neither end nor diminution.’

‘Sherlock, you are shaken with fear at the hurts John took to save you,’ said Khan, ‘So you are here to be reminded: all things die, yet all souls endure. This love my love and I found, and sought again, and grew through that seeking, has endured with us. It lives now in you, our current selves.’

‘Caring is not an advantage,’ muttered Sherlock, but not as though he believed in it.

Richard made a rude noise at the comment. ‘Nor is hatred, nor indifference. That I love Khan is the advantage that shone upon the path to another life.’

Khan bent to kiss Richard’s brow. ‘And yet we died,’ he said, ‘And died and died again till we could be once more reunited. We meet here at a crossroads of time, he having moved forward, I back, until our reunion in you. Yet it is inevitable. Death will one day come to you – but _separation_ will not. Our souls will not be parted for long again, no matter that death comes. Love will be the magnet to draw us close again. We two and you both; he and I; you, Sherlock, and you, John, are a binary system and belong together. We are quantum beings now and time does not own us as it used to.’

Sherlock and John, by the end of this wise speech, were looking at one another, speculation and conviction both in their eyes.

‘Fie, tis too much talk,’ said Richard suddenly, pulling away from the loving anchors of these hearts of honey. He rose and strode towards the river, throwing a swaggering look over his crooked shoulder.

‘Ha!’ Khan launched himself to his feet – pushing John and Sherlock aside in a tumble as he did – and gave chase. Richard, with a laugh, picked up his heels and ran through the grass and into the river, splashing water in foam around his shins and thighs. Khan ran in after him and a merry war ensued, scoops of water their cascading armies, marching closer and closer until they sued for peace by clinging together, dripping water, mouths joined in voiceless parley of mutual surrender.

Then they broke apart and laughed, and nipped each other’s shoulders and jaws and kissed again. Finally, Khan bent in the easy flowing water to strip out of his black trousers and throw them, sodden, to the bank. When he had straightened, Richard had found a portion of soap – scented with cedar and honeysuckle – and began to wash Khan with it.

John and Sherlock lay together in the grass and watched their other selves bathe in the river, with reverent concentration, as though this were a holy task. When Khan held Richard against his chest and began to wash his hair and beard, Sherlock and John rose and, hand-in-hand, they walked down to the river. Sherlock bent to take up a small piece of scented soap from the bank, and then they waded into the stream together. They began to bathe, and to bathe each other, and then Richard and Khan ran wet and soapy hands across their bodies, too.

The sensation of firm yet slippery hands on every portion of their skin, including their most intimate places, was both soothing and arousing. There was certainly reverence in the ritual, yet they smiled at each other, they gasped at sudden spikes of pleasure, they sometimes deliberately tickled each other, or let their fingers drag slow and voluptuous over lips, nipples, that sensitive spot beneath the point of the elbow; behind the knee, over the shell of an ear, the dip of a spine, the sensitive pucker between arsecheeks (angled, then, to encourage such welcome teasing).

Washed clean, yet sensitized and very aware of every breath and heartbeat, Richard and Khan and John and Sherlock stepped out of the flowing water, which streamed off their naked bodies, and gathered together on the grass.

Khan stretched out, displaying his long, lean limbs, and also the stirring of his interest, not yet urgent but in no way disguised. Sherlock sat cross-legged nearby and examined that body in sideways glances, looking for how it differed from his, and where it was the echo of his own, for just as Richard and John were similar yet not the same, so Sherlock and Khan departed in likeness. Khan was without scars, his musculature more solid, and there was of course the hair.

Khan smiled lazily at him, and Sherlock glanced away. Then, feeling ridiculous for the coyness, he gazed back with open curiosity. Khan rubbed his palm slowly down the length of his own swelling prick. ‘In some measures we are identical,’ he said.

Sherlock, heart quickening, cock rising, had to concur. And so, it seemed, did Richard, who watched them while tugging up linen trews and tying them with one hand.

John, sitting on Khan’s other side, was distracted from also admiring the twin comparisons, and regarded Richard with puzzlement.

Richard caught his look. ‘What is it, my cousin-self?’ At John’s reply, which was nought but an expression, questioning the presence of the garment, Richard plucked at the linen and said, ‘Why, our glade is not without its petty troubles. For once I did sit on a bug, which fought a valiant rear-guard retreat, and perforce my Khan set himself to kiss my rear-guard to wellness once more.’ He and Khan both smirked.

‘You’re not exactly subtle,’ observed John.

‘My subtlety was a cruel thing,’ said Richard, sudden-solemn, ‘This humour is less clever but more kind.’ Then he gave a sly and licentious grin. ‘Yet to satisfy thy curiosity – the perfectest joy of any raiment is the moment of its shedding, most especially when willingly aided in the task. Do you not agree?’

John’s smile unfolded like knowing sunshine. ‘Yes. Yes, I agree.’

Richard sat beside him, then, and blue eyes looked into blue, and the shaven face and bearded drew close together.

‘Wouldst thou show me thy accord?’

John leaned in to kiss him, and his hands went to the simple knot, tied only moments ago, to pull it free. He pressed his sturdy hand to Richard’s stomach and rested it there, to feel the flutter of Richard’s muscles while they kissed. His other hand he raised and rested on Richard’s withered arm, and stroked downward, firm and slow, to feel the skin, and to be felt. His strong fingers came to rest on Richard’s, which curled unmoving, and held that hand while they yet kissed.

John slid his fingers down the front of Richard’s trews, through the gold-blond thatch of hair, over cock and balls, cupped firm. Richard swayed into the touch, his moan a sigh and prayer in one.

Khan had reached for Sherlock when this display began, and Sherlock unfolded his long legs to come lay beside Khan. Now Sherlock rested, pulled back against Khan’s body, and he was content for Khan to run his hands over his chest and belly, his legs and between them too, while Sherlock reached up to stroke his fingers through Khan’s dark, straight hair and from time to time tilted up his face to kiss Khan’s throat and jaw. This indolent fondling continued as they watched their love begin to love himself again.

John withdrew his hand, making Richard gasp and his body chase after such contact again, but John instead released his hand and used both his own to push the linen trews down Richard’s hips, over his backside, and down his thighs.

‘You’re right,’ John murmured, kissing Richard, then his chest, then mouth again. ‘This is definitely one of the good parts.’ They shifted angles until John could pull the trousers free entirely, and then he kissed Richard’s feet and shins and knees and thighs.

Richard, legs spread and back arched, his prick hard and wet and thrust up into the air to beg for touch, muttering, ‘Aye, aye, aye’, all helpless with want.

John kissed him harder yet, and rutted firm and deliberate against Richard’s rutting, pulling Richard at last into his lap, the better to hold onto him.

Watching Khan began, too, to rut, to slow-thrust his own hard self against the plush delight of Sherlock’s arse. ‘I see,’ he murmured, ‘Why Richard makes such exhortations of this. Push back… _aaah_ , that feels good.’

Sherlock grunt-sighed, and used his hand to encourage Khan’s hand to stay languid-busy on his shaft. Thus employed, they both watched John and Richard more closely still.

‘Dost thou love me?’ Richard asked, not sly nor smug but in a voice small with wondering, his good arm clinging to John’s back, his legs bent and spread so that John could curl his hips and find friction, their two slick cocks sliding firm together.

‘Yes,’ panted John, both his arms about Richard and holding him close while their bodies mounted up a frenzy of pleasure. ‘Yes.’

‘For all I have turned from evil, I am Richard yet.’ Richard buried his face in John’s shoulder, shivering with his body’s pleasure but with a sudden doubt, too. ‘I am I.’

John, still moving sensuous-quick, drew Richard from his shoulder and kissed his mouth, his cheeks, his furrowed brow. ‘Richard is not all that you are. I am Richard, too.’

‘Aye, and I am John,’ said Richard with relief, ‘Thou goodly knight, true-hearted and brave. That I am become thee gives me succour. And Richard is forgiven. My lady told me so.’

‘You are,’ murmured John, and he held Richard closer, arms around his shoulders and his hips, the raw rutting now a more measured glide of their warm, perspiring bodies. He kissed his other self again, deep and soft and long, a sensuous, wordless speech of want and sharing. His retreat from the kiss was slow, with many rallies, hot mouth and tongue sipping and licking and giving and giving and giving, until Richard was making helpless sounds of bliss, not mindless but so, so mindful of the other man’s gift of acceptance.

At last, John pressed their foreheads together. ‘I love you,’ John crooned deep to him as they panted in and out each other’s breaths, ‘John loves you, and so Richard loves Richard.’

Richard cried out and came, thrusting helpless release of heart as well as body, and John held him near, through orgasm and through shuddering subsidence and through strange tearful tremors, too. Then Richard, still at last, kissed John, deep and long and lingering, a kiss of love and gratitude.

‘Thou art not yet satisfied,’ said Richard then, more observation at John’s still hot and undiminished erection than apology.

‘No hurry,’ said John, smiling, and so they held kissingly to each other.

Sherlock would not credit the tears pricking at his own eyes, until Khan, nestled behind him, wrapped his arms full round him and held him. Rocked him.

‘Sherlock loves Sherlock, too,’ he said.

‘Don’t be…’ _Ridiculous. Presumptuous. So personal._

‘Our many lives taught us many lessons,’ said Khan, heedless of Sherlock’s sudden tension, ‘So that Richard and I would know each other better. We were taught each other’s sorrows as well as one another’s joys. There is a kind of logic in it, if that matters so much to you. We better understand our worth now, he and I, and so too you and John. Not too much nor too little self love have we now, but what is right, and now we know it too. Is that not so?’

He soft-brushed his cheek alongside Sherlock’s. ‘We need not all the world to love us. We need only him, for he teaches us that our supremacy over the world is not supremacy over him. The love he gives us is not forced, but that which he chooses freely. He has never feared us, never cowed before the arrogant might of our mind nor body, never deemed us greater, nor lesser, for those things which set us apart. He has always loved us for our strength and weakness, all. I with my hands, you with your words, we always had the power to break him into pieces, and he defied us even to try, and he loved us with a fearless confidence that should we try, we would fail, and the assurance that we would not even so try. He is greater than us, by far, and does not know it. But see, how his old and new self do embrace and kiss and smile?’

Sherlock had melted in Khan’s embrace, and pressed Khan’s two hands against his own torso, one hand over his heart, the other over his stomach, and only now realised that Khan was rocking him slightly, a subtle comfort that he had not known he needed.

‘I want…’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Khan, and released him, and they both crossed to their fearless love and partook of the embrace, Khan behind Richard, Sherlock at John’s back.

‘How fare thee?’ Khan asked Richard, who still sat in John’s lap. Richard’s head fell back against Khan’s shoulder and he, eyes sparkling, replied:

‘Tolerably well, my angel, for I am contented as a cat.’

Sherlock, who had pressed up close behind John to kiss his neck and shoulders, reached across the armspan space to run his fingers through Richard’s beard, as though scratching such a feline’s fur. Richard stretched his neck to allow the liberty, while Khan petted his blond-fuzzed belly. Thus inspired, Sherlock petted John’s, too, then ran his hand and fingers down to pet and fondle John’s more neglected parts. John’s head fell back onto Sherlock’s shoulder then, and he sighed his approval of this development, and so sat John and Richard, nigh-mirroring one another.

The similarity did not escape Sherlock who, while bringing John to fresh hardness (and Richard and Khan both looked down and watched John’s pleasure grow), said to their twins:

‘John and I found this glade as it is in the current world. This was after we rescued him from Mycroft. John had a beard then, and it felt wonderful at the time, but I had beard burn for a few days. Walking was a trial, though worth it. In these dreams, that never seems to bother you, Khan. How does this work, or is it just that this place isn’t actually real?’

‘Tis real enough, and inspired by our ten days,’ said Khan.

But Richard, with a conspiratorial smile, only leaned towards Sherlock, and came close enough to press his lips to Sherlock’s ear, and he said, hushed, but loud enough for all to hear: ‘Bend thee over, and I will show thee.’

Sherlock’s eyes grew wide, and John grinned at Richard first and then said, ‘Show us.’

Laps were abandoned and new positions found. John knelt before Sherlock, who was on his hands and knees, and kissed and kissed him, smiling between each kiss. Behind Sherlock knelt Richard, who petted the rise of Sherlock’s backside with his left hand, then kissed the places his hand had been. He cupped the luscious bounty and stroked into the cleft with his thumb, and kissed there too, then kissed again. He nuzzled his face into the cleft, his long, soft beard brushing against Sherlock’s thighs and buttocks and balls, and then against the blushing skin between those pale, round cheeks. His questing tongue licked Sherlock wet upon each side.

‘Here, love, and let me help,’ said Khan, voice deep and gruff with a sudden, fiery desire he had not known he possessed for this moment. He reached to cup Sherlock’s backside in each of his hands, and he caressed and held firm and spread Sherlock, exposing him to their gaze.

Sherlock groaned into John’s mouth, and panted, feeling Khan’s hands holding him open, and Richard’s left hand upon his thigh. ‘ _John,_ ’ he gasped.

John, who watched Richard and Khan devoting their attention to one of the loveliest parts of Sherlock’s beauty, held Sherlock’s face in his hands. He kissed him and whispered to him, ‘Richard is kissing you there now. Can you feel him? Can you feel his mouth on you? Is his tongue in you yet? Khan’s watching him do that. Khan’s helping him do that. Oh, Christ, Sherlock… _Sherlock_ …’

As Richard nuzzled his face closer into that place and wiggled his tongue into the centre to lick and poke and wet-stripe the bared pucker of him, Sherlock cried out in incoherent pleasure. His achingly hard prick dribbled wetness to the grass and he arched his back and made as though to speak and could not, while Richard licked and nuzzled, deliberately brushing his beard into the cleft, while he kissed with open-mouth the little wrinkled dent that brought Sherlock (and always Khan) to such gibbering expressions of ecstasy. He licked again, and thrust with his tongue, and Sherlock babbled, face pressed to John’s throat.

John and Khan watched, and watched, and watched.

Khan was finally unable to resist. His hands left Sherlock’s arse (though Richard’s busy mouth remained pressed deep, intimately pleasuring Sherlock) and now Khan was caressing Richard’s bent spine, Richard’s bare arse and thighs. Now he was fondling Richard’s backside, and spreading it, and leaning in to kiss and lick and nuzzle his love in echo of his love’s loving attentions to Sherlock.

Richard arched his back to better present his nethers, but did not cease to pleasure Sherlock.

John watched them. And watched. And watched. He listened too, to muffled moans and hums of delight. He saw bodies flex and push, striving for greater closeness, greater pleasure, all sensation on the brink of too much yet not enough, for pricks remained untouched and wetly glistening where they rose, all rosy red, between trembling thighs.

John stroked Sherlock’s back, and down to dabble fingers through Richard’s hair. (Richard did not rise from his appointed task, but made a growling-happy sound and pushed his backside into Khan’s tongue, and thrust his tongue wet and greedy into Sherlock’s body.)

John, then, shifted, and kissed Sherlock, whose glazed eyes focused only on him.

‘ _John_ ,’ he said: a plea, a command, an exultation and a wish.

‘I want,’ said John, only it was a groan, an entreaty.

‘ _Yes_.’

At first, John crawled away from him, so that he could urge Khan with firm, encouraging hands to angle himself a little, _oh, just a little_ , and Khan obliged, face still burrowed to give Richard pleasure. Then John helped Sherlock to move a little, _oh, just that very little_.

And then John fondled and then spread Khan’s arse and kissed and licked. He paused to angle his own body into the circle he had made of them, and Sherlock, being brilliant, took the offered hips and bum in his two flexing hands, and spread his John and began to kiss and lick and tongue-thrust, while John resumed those same delights on Khan.

A wriggle here, and shift there, and the four of them were moan-humming, gasp-snuffling, licking, sucking, kissing, poking, kneading, fondling, tongue-fucking in a circlet of the most wanton, most wonderful, most pure voluptuous joy.

When the pleasure grew desperate, the circlet of loving men moved again, onto their back or side or front, whichever gave them best access, so that each mouth slid over a hard cock, huge and wet with the neglect of its desire, and sucked pleasure to his partner. Kisses to pearly slits, suckling on velvety heads, mouths sliding over shafts while fingers tickled and caressed and cupped sacs drawn tight.

Sherlock came first, into Richard’s soft-grunting mouth, and so triggered a cannonade of release. When mouths released their delicious burdens to cry out, keen hands replaced them, and one had not finished his pulsing completion before the next began, and yet they continued to kiss and lick and tease until each in turn must wriggle away from too much pleasure.

At last they lay in languid repose, heads and cheeks resting on another’s thigh or bum or belly in their replete circle, panting and grinning with their mad delight.

‘Well,’ said Sherlock when he found breath, ‘That quite fully explains the appeal of the beard.’

Richard nipped his pale bottom in reply, then kissed the reddened skin, then snuggled his nose into the ripe, round flesh to make it jiggle, and with a sigh pillowed his head upon it once more. ‘Tis true, I have a manly cheek, put oft to good use. Is that not so, my Khan?’

Khan laughed richly, and kissed his prince’s thigh. ‘You, my Richard, are a man of many manly virtues, accomplished in swordplay, riding and wrestling, all.’

John, head resting on Khan’s hip, stroked Sherlock’s ribs with the arches of his feet, so that Sherlock flexed into the touch. ‘You’re pretty good at singlestick yourself, aren’t you?’

‘We are excellent at fucking,’ Sherlock concluded.

*

Thereafter none did exactly sleep, but they lay together, draped all over one another, dozing and content, listening to the birds and the merrily rippling brook. Sherlock drew John close to him, and they cuddled and drowsed and after a time they grew aware of Richard and Khan nearby, speaking softly, with kissing sounds between their speech.

‘My arm is not the dead thing I once thought for when it touches thee I feel the life in thee.’ 

A sighing kiss, the gently smacking sound of it replete with sweetness and more saucy satisfaction.

‘Tell me, Richard,’ Khan said low, for Richard’s hearing, though not ashamed that others would as well.

‘Thy heart beats beneath these bent fingers, and it is strong, like a lion. I know that should I press my other hand to thy chest, I would feel it beating like a blacksmith’s hammer.’ 

Khan smiled, pleased at the analogy. ‘Aye, Richard. Your touch does forge steel in me that my heart will fashion to a blade to shield and defend and fight beside thee.’

‘I cannot always likewise be sword and shield to thee,’ said Richard, resigned to this truth, ‘But I shall ever be thy sentinel when fate denies the rest to me.’

Khan pressed his body along Richard’s, to kiss him, to nestle between his legs, which spread and wrapped around his hips. ‘Whatever fate and fortune bring,’ said Khan, ‘We are one united heart.’

‘Our destiny is rewrit, now,’ agreed Richard, ‘No fate can make us part.’

Khan moved Richard’s withered hand down his body, over his chest and stomach, to his prick and balls, and Richard murmured, ‘Oh yes, oh I feel thee, love, thy body, thy skin, thy heart, thy heat, thy desire, all of thee, love, with this wasted limb, I feel all of thee, oh, oh…’ 

And John and Sherlock became aware that Khan was holding Richard’s fingers in his mouth, suckling upon them, while his body undulated, hips rocking his hard prick into Richard’s welcoming body.

Sherlock reached for John, and pulled him near, and kissed him. ‘You are hurt but you will heal,’ he said, remembering why they were here in this glade, ‘We don’t have to be afraid that we will be lost again.’

John ran his fingers over Sherlock’s cheeks, into his hair, over the curve of his ears and down his swan-like neck, and kissed the trails his fingers left, then kissed the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, and his lips. ‘We are who we are,’ he said, ‘Though maybe we can be a little less reckless.’

They paused to look at each other, and began to laugh, because a certain recklessness was hard-wired into each of them. But they knew – even when they could not be sword or shield to each other, each would stand sentinel, a tower to guard and give rest.

They were who they were, and they were eternal.

And each, with their present love, made love in the glade by the river, in an echo of the place where their love began.

After, when they all lay on the grass, looking at the sky fading from blue to indigo to black with the stars all out, Sherlock named the constellations.

‘Aye,’ said Richard sleepily, ‘But do not forget thee, that Khan is a moonlit angel, a shining star who is the jewel of the firmament.’

‘And that Richard is the sun that shines bright upon my world and brings me warmth and life. He is the spring and the summer sky,’ said Khan, holding Richard’s hand.

‘You are the best and wisest man I’ve ever known,’ breathed John to Sherlock.

‘No,’ exhaled Sherlock in reply, ‘You are.’

And they slept.

*

And John and Sherlock woke, desire high in their veins, and though John was still bruised and injured, he wanted Sherlock more than he wanted rest.

Sherlock’s body lay close to John’s, all along his arm and ribs and legs, placing no pressure on his hurts but sharing warmth and the electric buzz of skin next to beloved skin.

‘Touch me,’ John insisted, and Sherlock obeyed. He wrapped his hand around John’s straining length and, while he nuzzled and kissed John’s jaw and ear, he moved his hand to John’s instruction.

‘Touch… yes… rub… yes, there, over the… god. Rub the slit, rub the… under the… oh, Christ, yes, play with it there, and down… god… on my balls, like that, god, like that, yes, now… Christ, yes, your fingers, like that, like… fuck, oh fuck, yes, now, now… pull… tighter… yes, fuck, Sherlock, yes, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop, keep going, like that, faster, more, oooooh, oh fuck, aaaaaah, yes, yes yes yesyesgodIloveyoujustlikethat.. ye….ah!’

When he was spent, John reached for Sherlock, and smiled with blatant, burning desire and urged Sherlock with, ‘You now, you, Sherlock. I can’t… you’ll need to…’ And so Sherlock took his own straining cock in hand and slow-wanked himself, again to John’s instruction. ‘That’s it. Slow. More. Does it feel good? Do you…?’

Sherlock moaned so loud, so wanton, so deep and hoarse with his desire, it made John breathless.

‘Over me,’ John urged him, ‘I want you all over me.’

Sherlock, addled with passion, but mindful yet, kneeled athwart John’s hips, raised up on his knees so he did not injure his love. He gazed dazedly, feverishly, down into John’s bright eyes that were as fever-bright in return, burning like the sun.

‘All over me,’ John urged again. Sherlock’s hand pumped up and down his slick shaft, wet sounds spurring them both on.

As desire built to the cresting point, John commanded, ‘Hands, away!’ and trusting Sherlock released his grip, held his hands away. John took over, heedless of the pull of aching bruises. His fingers encircled Sherlock’s thickness, and he pulled the slippery, velvety skin, so hot over the hardness of Sherlock’s cock; he rubbed the slick slit of him, and circled his thumb over the head and under it, and made his grip the just-right tightness around Sherlock and he said, ‘Come baby, come on Sherlock. All over me. Fuck, yes, yes, mark me, come all over me, I want you all over me, Sherlock, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it…’

Sherlock, hips jerking as he thrust himself into the circle of John’s fist, his arms and hands splayed wide for balance, cried out and marked John for his with sticky stripes.

Later, on waking again, snuggled together, Sherlock regarded the still faintly matted hair on John’s chest and belly (the initial attempt to wipe him down had made him hurt, and he said, in any case, he didn’t mind) and he smiled his smug satisfaction, and went back to sleep.

*

Years came and went. John and Sherlock each earned wounds in defence of and in battle for each other. When they could not be sword or shield, they stood sentinel beside each other. They were reckless, and tried not to be, and were reckless again, and laughed, when they did not frighten themselves to temporary silence.

They fought enemies both stranger and more cruel than an alien telepath, and they won. They loved each other, and they lived their extraordinary lives and they became legends.

After a long and fruitful life, death came, as it does for all, but it was not the end, just as Richard and Khan had promised. Their souls were a binary system, steeped through with quantum energy, and when the universe didn’t know what to do with them, it looked into a universe-next-door and sent them thither.

They met young in that universe, and did great things – and became legends together.

And then death came, but the end did not, and they went together to another universe-next-door. Then another. Then another.

They met, young or old, in many genders, many guises, but wherever they were, they were always together, always achieving greatness. Always, ever after, worth the name of champion.

And in all their many lives (always the Holmes and Watson that were needed for their world and time) they would dream – of other selves and other worlds, and most often of a king and a warrior who had surrendered both those titles and all the misery that had been wrapped up therein, for their own and the other’s sake, to become better men.

In those dreams, the moonlit angel and his glorious sun revelled in their fierce devotion, whether chasing playful through the trees, or moving together in carnal ardour, or swaying together in a dance with no music but their hearts.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who has joined me here in this little world, with the reincarnated homicidal dream boyfriends and their loving passion for each other, and their journey of redemption. I've treasured every kudos and comment. Thank you, and well met!
> 
> Especial thanks to Atlin Merrick, who suggested the idea, and aranel_parmadil, whose podfics of this series have brought me such joy.
> 
> And lastly, thank you to MF for his Richard and his John, and BC for his Khan and his Sherlock - those characters have been such an inspiration!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Perchance to Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951669) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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